MANILA – House of Representatives prosecution panel adviser and spokesperson Ace Barbers on Friday urged Filipinos to remain vigilant against a growing information threat, following the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ warning that foreign malign influence operations are increasingly exploiting various domestic controversies, including the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.
Barbers said retired Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad’s warning should not be taken lightly, particularly because foreign influence operators are reportedly moving away from easily identifiable pro-China messaging and instead attaching themselves to issues already generating strong emotions among Filipinos.
Trinidad recently disclosed that AFP monitoring has detected malign information operations riding on issues such as the Duterte impeachment, the flood-control controversy, and the Sanjia Steel issue.
“The danger is that a real issue can be hijacked by false narratives. The impeachment is a constitutional process, but if foreign actors are manipulating information surrounding it, Filipinos must be smart enough to distinguish legitimate criticism from deliberately manufactured propaganda,” Barbers said in a news release.
The former Surigao del Norte lawmaker said that based on open-source searches on the Internet, there is now a substantial body of evidence – particularly from Meta, Reuters, Graphika, Microsoft, Philippine government officials, and independent researchers – showing how China-linked influence operations work in the Philippines and elsewhere.
The most sophisticated strategy of the operations, Barbers said, was to exploit existing Filipino divisions.
He said it can be enough to make Filipinos distrust the government; distrust the military; distrust journalists; distrust elections; distrust the United States; distrust one another; believe every political controversy is fabricated; and believe opposing Filipinos are “traitors” or “foreign agents.”
“China-linked foreign malign influence operations are exploiting contentious Philippine political issues, including the Duterte impeachment controversy, to deepen polarization and shape public opinion,” Barbers said, citing data sourced from the Internet.
He said the important tactic is often “narrative laundering."
An overt Chinese state-media message may first appear in an official outlet, then be repeated by apparently independent pages, influencers, and ordinary-looking accounts until it begins to look like a domestic Filipino viewpoint.
He said one of the China-linked operations has used networks of fake or inauthentic accounts to create the appearance that particular views are widely held by ordinary Filipinos.
Barbers said this makes social media a particularly dangerous battlefield because a foreign-sponsored narrative does not have to openly identify itself as Chinese propaganda.
It can instead appear as an ordinary political post, a seemingly independent commentary, a viral video, or a personal attack on a public official before being repeatedly amplified across online platforms.
“This is particularly effective because a Facebook account can simply say, ‘Here's the report from this Philippine news website.’ The reader may never realize that the website itself is part of a coordinated influence ecosystem, where the Chinese media provides the overt layer,” he said.
“The objective may not be to convince every Filipino to support China. It may simply be to make Filipinos distrust one another, distrust their institutions, and lose sight of the facts. If they can turn Filipinos against Filipinos, they have already achieved something.”
Because of this, Barbers reiterated his earlier appeal for the public to examine the actual evidence presented before the Senate impeachment court instead of relying on social media posts, memes, edited videos, and personal attacks against members of the prosecution panel. (PNA)
